I am the dusty ground, low and dry

thirsty for the imprint of holy feet.

Despoil with radiant prints, this virgin ground.

___

You are the rain, falling deftly

upon my brown soil. Now is left

your footprint on this ground.

___

I am the ashen leaves, curling and broken

awaiting but a whisper. For only then

can I fall on solid ground.

___

You are the soundless wind, howling, still.

You creep up behind me and

exhale me to the ground.

___

I am the snow, disembodied worlds of cold

and chance encounters with hand, or tongue,

eye-lash or palm needing ground.

___

You are the frozen air in which I am held

aloft, drawn slowly down

to meet with others on the frozen ground.

___

I am the waning autumn death

soon to give way to the long silence-when one Voice

becomes the loudest ground.

___

You are the Voice that speaks

heard best in dying, power given for

rising from this shivering ground.

___

I am the distant hours, the midnight passing-

the refusing minutes, trapped in hours,

running from the years of ancient ground.

___

You are the many, and the one, and all time

and nothing and everything from nothing

where time has no ground.

___

I am the weeping, the squalid groaning,

the unrequited miseries of misery’s company

laying crippled and diffused in the ground.

___

You are the end of tears and years, the question

and the answer, the sutured nerve of joy, not suggested

but present, here, on this Holy Ground.